A couple of months ago I hired a company that specializes in building SugarCRM modules to create a brand new SugarCRM module called “SugarCRM Form Builder”. I had already spent a lot of time doing research and spent dozens of hours poring over what other people were doing and that’s when the light bulb went off! NO-ONE, (until now), has ever built a custom form builder/creator for SugarCRM as a custom module. So instead everyone just uses the very basic one that comes with sugar (which is very limited).

I decided that the next step was to then sit down and take a look at all that has already been done regarding this type of project for the various CMS solutions like WordPress, Joomla etc. What I discovered lead me to an even more refined concept – “Why not be the very first person to build a custom SugarCRM form builder that would allow us to sell individual add-on modules to bridge in all the other various types of CMS sites like WordPress and Joomla, even Shopping carts, and of course my favorite Real Estate Solutions……Cha-Ching….I think we’ve found something! =)

So after investing a few months in development + thousands of dollars…. Our very first version will be released within 2 weeks (beta testing begins next week). This first version will be just for WordPress and includes a WordPress SugarCRM Plugin that is designed to do just 2 things – first thing is to process the shortcode in order to display the forms with WordPress pages, post, and text widgets – second thing is to simply curl in the sugarcrm admin panel so that you can create your forms and generate the form ID’s all from within the WordPress Admin area without having to leave WordPress. This simplifies the whole process by now allowing you to just enter a url path to where ever you have your SugarCRM already installed – in fact you will be able to use just one SugarCRM installation that can then be tied into unlimited websites. For example if you have a Joomla module or a WordPress module you could use a single install of SugarCRM and tie it into unlimited WordPress websites!

One of the latest changes just made to our form build that we think will make this even more valuable for consumers is that when you create a new custom form you are prompted to select a pre existing module first (its where the forms lead information will be stored) – for example the “contact module” – So lets say that the Contact module currently only has “first-name” “last-name” – BUT – the new form that you’ve just created has new fields such as “Phone#” “email” etc. well then when you hit the generate button it will [ flag ] all of the new fields that are not currently in that particular module and then prompt you to [ add ] those fields to the contact module “automatically” without have to stop everything and pre add these fields to a particular module.

Our next version will be for Joomla and the concept will be similar to our WordPress but will obviously require several changes and the creation of a new component for Joomla.

Now for the question of how all of this ties into my favorite subject “Real Estate” – Well of course this entire project came from ideas that we were already kicking around for our 3.0 project and so when we do release our new 3.0 this will already be bundled within it as a fully functioning lead router with all of the options that SugarCRM has to offer – and that’s about all that I’ll leak out about our 3.0 project at this time.